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Life

After the trauma of contemplating nuclear devastation and the drug infused, drunken debauchery of Audlem music festival we finally cast off our bow line on Tuesday morning and continued our progress south. The most pressing thing on our mind was water, which we were running short of and something less pleasant that we had an over abundance of after five days in the same spot. The weather Gods thought it would be highly amusing to try and drown us as we pulled into the service point where other boaters were already filling up and emptying out. Standing by the boat holding a rope in torrential rain whilst queuing for water holds a certain irony I suppose but it’s not amusing.

Heading south to, errr, the toilet

What we really
needed after several days of over indulgence and late nights was a
nice gentle plod along an uncomplicated stretch of peaceful water but
Audlum isn’t like that. From our mooring we had two locks to
negotiate to the water point followed by a third one before the
toilet facilities and then twelve more in quick succession. Five
bright and breezy hours later we closed the last lock gate with a
weary sigh and pulled into a beautiful spot surrounded by trees and
heralded by glorious bird song. The peace and solitude were in stark
contrast to all the frantic activity and noise of the festival but it
was just the antidote we needed and much more typical of what we
expect when travelling this stretch of water.

It was a short easy
hop to Market Drayton the next day and a two night stop to catch up
on shopping and a few chores and to rendezvous with friends that we
met when we were travelling last summer. It just so happened that
Alan and Jacky were heading north and expected to be in Market
Drayton the next day so the six of us arranged to meet up and have a
catch up over dinner in the Red Lion. Good food and beer shared with
great company is an evening well spent in my book and another
cherished memory to deposit in the bank. Like all members of a
similar tribe we love swapping stories and the more outrageous the
better. Canal life is a rich seam to be tapped and the evening passed
with an endless stream of laughter as the bonds of friendship were
gently tightened before warm goodbyes in anticipation of future
encounters.

Random strange sight

The Shropshire Union canal in this part of the county comprises sets of locks separated by long stretches of peaceful flat water passing through a succession of cuttings and embankments. The cuttings are sometimes deep and dark, almost jungle like with a cacophony of bird song and rich earthy smells. The tree tops often meet over the water forming a leafy emerald tunnel and where it was necessary to cut through tough unforgiving rock the channel narrows to little more than one boat’s width. Some of these narrow channels are straight whilst others meander left and right providing a little exciting anticipation at the prospect of meeting a boat coming the other way. Then suddenly the land and foliage fall away to each side as the cutting transforms to high embankment and darkness is replaced with brilliant light and expansive views in all directions. This landscape was typical of the next day’s travel as we left Market Drayton with Bob and Marie in our wake and entered the first narrows. Once clear of the challenging set of five Tyrley locks we were back in open countryside and The Longmynd and Stretton hills were clearly visible in the distance to the west. Gill and I remembered that there were good moorings not far ahead and as luck would have it we managed to grab the two best spots with panoramic views and good solid rings to tie up to.

Fingers crossed

Ten minutes later we
have claimed our patch on the tow path and with chairs set out and
mugs of tea in hand we can relax and admire the scenery whilst
reflecting on the day’s sights and sounds. Later it’s Bob and Marie’s
turn to meet up with their boating friends Paul and Jackie and whilst
there is no pub involved this time it makes little difference and
soon their friends are our friends and so it continues. Despite our
widely differing backgrounds and experience there is common ground in
abundance and a whole morning is lost to yet more stories and belly
aching laughter amongst the inevitable discussion of the less
glamorous, more basic side of narrow boat living. You know what I
mean.

It feels as if we
are gradually being absorbed into a lovely welcoming community of
water travellers that come together and drift apart but always with
an assumption that paths will cross again and friendships will be
rekindled.

Twelve months ago today, on the 27th of September 2017 we moored up our Golden Girl for the very first night of our new life. As I recall it Gill was exhausted from the physical effort of raising paddles and pushing heavy lock gates and I was exhausted by the stress of handling the boat during those first half a dozen miles of our journey. A year later and the journey continues along the waterways and of life and the learning goes on.

Having lived through a particularly cold winter and one of the hottest summers on record I think it is safe to say that we now have some idea of what living on a narrow boat is all about. Those first few days on the boat last year were a very steep learning curve but now after this year’s journey of nearly six hundred miles (and counting), 370 locks, numerous tunnels, aqueducts and bridges I think we can also say that we have some boating experience under our belts. Living in such a small space and being responsible for your own water, fuel and waste distils life to the basics and that in itself has been another challenge. So have we learned anything?

Deep in thought, deep in a lock

Self sufficiency certainly. Practical skills of course. But most of all I think we have learned to cherish the simple things in life. Perfectly still mornings when the mist rises from the water and nothing disturbs its glassy surface. Leaving a mooring when the only sound is that of the dawn chorus and no other boats are moving yet. The flash of electric blue as a kingfisher skims by the boat and the wary look of a heron as it watches us pass by and tries to decide whether to stand its ground or gracefully move on. Relaxing on the back of the boat at the end of a tiring but fulfilling day and watching a spectacular display of light and colour as the sky comes to life with the setting of the sun. All things that cost nothing but give plenty.

Should I stay or should I go?

One of the things we have laughed about is the feeling of satisfaction and comfort that we both get when we leave somewhere with a fresh tank of water, empty toilets and bins and having re-fuelled with diesel and gas and re-stocked the larders with food. It makes us feel totally self sufficient and that the world is, once again, our oyster. We are free to go wherever our fancy takes us, to stop and moor wherever and whenever we like and to enjoy the anticipation of new places and people as yet undiscovered. To travel with no real destination is the best kind of exploration but it has been something that has had to be learned and I’m not convinced we have totally mastered that skill yet. It’s going to take time as well as miles and maybe another long trip or two to really perfect that skill but we are getting there.

Early morning bliss

I think from our previous experiences travelling we had already learned that people are mostly kind and friendly, always willing to help a stranger in need but this last few months has helped to reinforce those lessons. We have met some incredibly kind folks, made life long friends and enjoyed coming across some real ‘characters of the cut’. So much of what we now know has been generously passed to us by people such as Bob and Betty. Both in the latter half of their eighties we first came across them as Bob skilfully reversed their boat into a mooring space whilst Betty jumped nimbly from the prow with the rope to tie up the boat. Later that day they invited us on board for gin and tonics and regaled us with fabulous tales of their fifty four years of boating. Including the one about their second boat “which kept on sinking all the time”. Listening to them and seeing the sparkle in their eyes made me both wish that we had taken to this lifestyle earlier but also very grateful that we have done it at all.

Of course just because we have learned some valuable lessons over this last year it doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty more to learn. I am still trying to understand why I haven’t been motivated to write for example. I thought that having lots of free time and plenty of subject matter writing the blog would be easy but it hasn’t been so at all. Learning that it’s OK not to write is one of the trickier lessons for me. We also still fall out and bicker sometimes over silly trivial stuff but that’s probably related to living in such a confined space and always in each other’s pockets. We haven’t met anybody yet who has the answer to that one!

Sometimes it feels as if we have this new lifestyle down pat and there is little more to learn and then at other times I still feel like I am only in the foothills of the greatest mountain I will ever climb. It seems as if our lives go round in a circle. We start out doing little other than learning and then after a period of thinking that we know it all the learning starts again. Long may it go on, I’m loving it.

Like this:

I have been repairing the damage I did to the boat during our short trip last autumn. There is a surprising amount of it when you get up close and start to examine it but it’s not all bad news. It turns out that rusty scratches and scrapes are a bit like music and perfume in that they bring back detailed memories to savour and roll around the mind. Admittedly, most of the memories that I am talking about here were tainted by fear, embarrassment and a strong sense of my own incompetence as I bashed the boat into wharfs, trees, fences and the occasional other boat. (Don’t tell anybody about that last bit.) However, it’s the painful memories, the ones that recall what didn’t go so smoothly that stay with us for longer and they mellow with time.

The scars on the boat remind me that the bad times rarely prevail anyway and mostly we find ourselves looking back on them with a positive slant. Relief that they are over, laughter at our own stupidity, an understanding of how easy it is to get things out of proportion at the time. Bad memories will often trigger good ones too. When we were being blown against that horrible rusty old Armco barrier and the expensive paint was being stripped away with a horrible screeching sound, that was when the lovely hire boat couple came and rescued us. We enjoyed some really great times with Chris and Steph over the next forty eight hours, proof that losing a bit of paint isn’t necessarily the disaster it feels like at the time.

Patchwork

I was a bit apprehensive about tackling the paint repairs as it was probably forty years since I had last done anything like it. Attacking our beautiful girl with power tools and wire brushes seemed counter intuitive but like so many things, the anticipation was far worse than the reality. I tentatively applied the screaming sanding tool to the first rusty patch and almost immediately felt much better. What had felt like an aggressive invasive process very quickly turned into a healing one. It dawned on me that having done the damage in the fist place it would be cathartic to repair it and make good my early blunders. As I progressed along the side of the hull I relived each damaging impact. I heard the sickening scrunching sound of concrete on steel and regretted not having tackled the repairs more quickly.

Re-living the damage

The rust was like a screeching voice, berating me for my lack of urgency and my timidity in not getting to grips with the job sooner. “A stitch in time” became my irritating mantra running around my head as I worked. But as I applied the first coat of primer paint my whole mood changed to one of achievement. The memories of those awful moments as I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what damage I had done were replaced with ones of beautiful bright afternoons gliding along on sun dappled water. I found I could only remember the good times. The vibrant flash of blue as a kingfisher zipped along in front of us or the expectant heron reluctantly giving up his hungry vigil, rising on lazy gigantic wings to find a quieter fishing spot. The sense of satisfaction and achievement at the end of the hard day and the glorious first sip of a well earned pint in a canalside pub.

Oops! I remember that one.

I have absolutely no doubt that there will be plenty of incidents this summer that will result in more paint being lost. I am hoping that as we get more skilled at manoeuvring they will become less frequent but even so I won’t be quite so precious from now on. The scars I have covered up will remain visible due to my lack of professional skills but they will serve as reminders of good times not bad. I will try to see them as minor negative incidents that form tiny parts of a much greater positive experience. Of course we could avoid any further damage to the boat by simply not going anywhere. We could spend the summer painting and polishing her lovingly and then sitting back and admiring her. But that isn’t living is it?

The more I worked on repairing the boat and the more I realised how like life she is. Life is all about those knocks and scrapes. Without scars to remind us of life’s challenges and how we survived them what is the point. That’s why we will be off in a few weeks to time to scrape some more paint off the boat and make some more memories in the process. I might take a pot of paint and a brush with me this time though.

Like this:

We’ve been living on the boat for a month now and I think it’s fair to say that we can class ourselves as ‘live-aboards’. Novice ‘live-aboards’ I’ll grant you but ‘live-aboards’ all the same. We have also manoeuvred the boat in and out of marinas, through locks and swing bridges and battled sideways winds completely ineffectively.

Perfect day for a winding hole

Maybe you could call us seasoned novices. From here on I suppose it really is just a matter of practice and experience apart from one particular manoeuvre which had, until last Friday, eluded me. Or, more accurately, I had avoided. The operation in question was turning the boat around on the canal. It’s the watery equivalent of a three (or possibly five or seven) point turn and it can only be performed in specific places where the canal widens out into what is called a winding hole. There is much debate about the pronunciation of this canal feature based on whether or not you are thinking in terms of wrapping cotton around a bobbin, winding; or, encouraging a baby to burp after a good feed, winding. If you see what I mean. Based on the fact that narrow boats never had engines in their original form then winding as in baby burping makes sense because the wind would have been used to assist with the turning procedure. I could wind myself up in knots discussing this but it isn’t really the subject of the blog so let’s leave it there. Pronounce it how you like.

Gill in full control

Back to my concerns over the actual turning business and why I was apprehensive. There are two issues really. The first is making a judgement as to whether or not the hole in question is actually big enough to turn our 57′ boat around in and the second, which is related, is the probability of getting stuck, grounded on the shallows at the edges of the canal. It’s easy to blow these things out of proportion by over contemplating them and that’s exactly what I had done. My mind was partially put at rest by a friendly lock keeper. When I told him that it was the only thing I hadn’t yet mastered and that I was a bit nervous about it he came up with a bit of infallible logic to put my mind at ease. He pondered the problem for a moment and then said; “You know the canal network is about 200 years old and to the best of my knowledge, there are no boats stuck in winding holes.” I nearly replied that I might be the first but thought better of it and laughed heartily at my unfounded concerns instead.

Did we really come through there?

Last Friday was forecast to be wall to wall sunshine and, most importantly, dead calm. There would never be a more suitable opportunity for a bit of winding hole turning so having failed to come up with any plausible excuse for not going we sailed off under a cloudless blue sky. Forty minutes and two miles later we turned the boat around without grounding or wrapping any trees or submerged debris around the prop and we are not, as I imagined we might be, still stuck in the winding hole three days later.

In the hole

That’s close enough

The whole process was completely without drama and I actually really enjoyed it. In other words, as is so often the case, I had been worrying about nothing. It was a classic case of the monkey on the shoulder whispering in my ear; “you might get stuck”, “you might foul the prop”, “the winding hole might be too small”, and so it goes on until the problem becomes insurmountable.

Not listening to that pesky little monkey is a lesson that I have to just keep on learning over and over. The lock keeper was right, there aren’t any boats stuck in winding holes but if that monkey has his way he’ll drive you into a hole that you really may never get out of. Don’t listen to him.

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Today hasn’t worked out as planned at all. The weather forecast said it would be a bit warmer last night and today would be calm but foggy. We had tentatively discussed a little trip out on the boat, just a few miles down the canal to a turning point and back to the marina in time for tea. It would also be the ideal opportunity to let the stove go out and give it a really good clear out. It’s been burning for a couple of weeks now and it tends to get a bit clogged up and less efficient as time goes on. That was the plan, this is the reality: Gill is tucked up in bed with a horrible cold infection, the marina has a thin coating of ice on it again and I have spent the last hour coaxing the fire back to life rather than letting it go out. We are going nowhere today.

Come to think of it, today is like an analogy of the bigger picture. Our old home in Warton is up for sale but we haven’t had any offers so far. Paying bills on two homes means that we are tied to working until such time as it’s sold and being tied to work means that we can’t just take off and travel indefinitely on the boat. In other words, we are going nowhere tomorrow or the next day either.

Never mind; it’s nice when a plan comes together but it’s also important to be flexible and make the most of things when it doesn’t.

Another plan has gone a bit pear shaped in the last few days but in a good way. We had been planning to go back to our old house and pack up the rest of our belongings to bring them back to the boat. Goodness knows where we were going to put it all but we would cross that bridge later. I knew that we could be imaginative and creative in using all the available space on the boat and I just hoped that once we had it all on board we would work something out. Fortunately, the problem was solved by a simple observation from Gill. She said to me one morning; “the mistake we are making is trying to fit our old life into the boat rather than starting a new one on it”. Light bulb moment!

Just needs a bit of organising

We realised with a bit of reflection that we had been living on board Golden Girl for months now without any hardship whatsoever. We are living in comfort, doing everything we want to do and enjoying life. Why do we need more stuff? So rather than go back to collect the rest of our precious belongings we examined what we were actually missing and it turned out to be next to nothing. What should have been several trips in the car and maybe the use of hire van became one trip, a half filled car and wonderful sense of freedom.

A few more ‘essentials’ to find a home for

We left behind kitchen cupboards and wardrobes full of ‘stuff’ that it turns out we just don’t need. Admittedly there are several boxes of things going into storage but nearly all of that falls into the category of ‘having special meaning’. You know, particular books, photos, keep-sakes etc. No doubt we will get pleasure one day from unpacking them again or if not, some poor relative will unpack them and add them to the pile of rubbish to be discarded.

We thought that we had been pretty good at paring down our belongings over the years but it seems that the temptation to acquire stuff is limited only by the space available to store it in. You may only be able to wear one pair of shoes at a time but given enough cupboard space you can’t half hoard a lot of pairs. We will, of course, have to empty the old house at some point but the contents will mostly be heading to the charity shops or the tip rather than joining us on board as part of our new life. Well, that’s the plan…………. for now.

Like this:

Amongst the stuff that we inherited when we purchased our Golden Girl was a set of bathroom scales. Neither of us are overly obsessive about our weight but on the basis of not looking a gift horse in the mouth, and the fact that they looked quite expensive, we decided to keep them. It turns out that they don’t really work on a boat. The problem is that of shifting weight. I don’t mean that we are dieting so furiously that the scales can’t keep up with us. No, the problem is that when you stand on the scales the boat rocks and the electronics in the workings can’t understand what’s going on. About four out of five attempts result in a long delay before “EE” is displayed. I am assuming that at least one of those letters stands for Error, your guess is as good as mine as to the other one. Electronic Error perhaps? Or maybe just Eating Excessively. Anyway, the point is you have to keep stepping on and off the scales multiple times before you get a reading. Just attempting to find out your current weight is probably a reasonable workout and may in fact result in a steady stream of diminishing readings if you keep at it long enough.

Captions welcome

As I said I don’t usually bother with such things but as I have joined the flock of sober sheep that are doing Dry January I thought I might just weigh myself once a week to see what difference an absence of alcohol might make. After a prolonged session of what must have looked like the easiest step exercises ever, I managed to get two identical readings indicating that I had lost 3lbs. I hastily stepped off the scales and put them away before they changed their mind.

This is the third time in four years that I’ve done Dry January. I didn’t do it last year because I was worried that I might be developing a habit. It’s been much easier this year in that I know what to expect, know I can do it and there is altogether less drama about the whole affair. I think I do it mostly to prove to myself that I’m still in charge, thus giving myself permission to drink again for eleven months of the year. I’ve never felt for one minute that I was in danger of becoming dependent on drink but I do have an alcoholic gene in me so I’m always aware that the potential is there given the right circumstances. Besides it’s nice to spend a month sleeping like a log, eating like a horse and waking up every morning feeling as fresh as a daisy. If you’ve never tried it maybe you should give it a go next year and find out what it’s like to experience a variety of life forms other than your own.

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New Year greetings seem to be going the way of Christmas sales in that they get earlier and earlier each year. Social media is full of Happy New Year messages today even though the new year hasn’t arrived yet. I’m not sure whether it’s a case of ‘getting in first’ or just general over-exuberance for the celebrations. Or maybe some people think that they may not be capable of selecting the correct characters in the early hours of 2018. I’m prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt though and be happy that they want me to be happy.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your sentiments but to be honest; this coming year, 2018, would have to throw something pretty unexpected and unpleasant at me to make it anything other than a happy one. I know I am probably tempting fate saying that but really I am truly optimistic about what lies ahead.

I’m going to a party tonight, the first New Year’s Eve party I have been to for some years and Gill tells me we are “staying to see the New Year in”. Something else I haven’t done for a while. The party is a home made affair arranged by the residents of the marina and it will be another chance to meet a few more fellow boaters and to reinforce the feeling that what we are doing, moving permanently onto the boat is the right thing for us. I can’t ever recall making such a significant, life changing move at the precise moment that we move from one calendar year to another and although the date shouldn’t make any difference logically, it does. It feels very much like a new beginning in every sense.

As I type, Gill is working her last shift in Lytham and later today we will go back to the boat and leave our old life behind. I’m looking forward so much to this new adventure. The chance to learn new skills maintaining and driving the boat, making new friends on the marina and further afield and learning to live a completely new way of life from anything that has gone before. It’s really exciting and it reinforces my belief that whilst we are all either alive or dead there are so many shades of living in between. We all owe it to ourselves to find the most fulfilling and rewarding life we can and not to settle for second best.

I reached into the fridge the other week and found half a lemon going soft and showing signs of mould. I tossed it into the bin (compost of course) but giving it a second thought I realised what a great metaphor for life it offered. I realised how sad it was that it had only half fulfilled it’s role. I can’t remember whether the used half contributed to a G and T or added zest to a lemon drizzle cake but I was sad that half of it had been wasted. Life’s a bit like that isn’t it? It’s so easy to let half of your life go unused, only to find it lying at the back of the proverbial fridge when you reach the end of your days.

I wish all of you the best of life in 2018 and urge you to go out and squeeze that lemon as hard as you possibly can.

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The Scots would call it a ‘dreich day’, the Irish a ‘soft day’. Personally, I would call it a ‘bloody miserable wet day’. However you want to dress it up, I’m not inspired to experience it other than through the window and with the benefit of a full tea-pot and a glowing fire. It’s the perfect recipe for a spot of self-indulgent navel gazing.

A dreich day

I’m always conscious when I start writing that there are countless blogs out there telling us how to live our lives. From Kafir to Pilates, detoxing to mindfulness there is always some holier-than-thou preacher pushing ‘the solution’ and filling us full of guilt because we aren’t on board. They berate us for our consumerism and accuse us of destroying our precious planet whilst proffering the simple meditative, all-fulfilling alternative of living in a small space on a vegan diet in the woods. Whenever I come across these blogs I worry that maybe I am guilty of the same thing. I have never suggested that anybody ‘ought’ to cycle around Britain on a bicycle and I have never said that living on a narrow boat is in some way the ‘correct’ way to live ones life but I do worry that it could come over that way.

When I was younger I had a passion for reading accounts of unbelievable feats of bravery. Tales of near death experiences on ice encrusted peaks in the Himalayas had me spell-bound. I devoured them hungrily but I never once considered following in their footsteps. I never felt that the authors of these sagas were suggesting that I ‘ought’ to be doing the same thing or that what they did was some kind of path to enlightenment. They were having a good time and they felt compelled to share it as far as I could tell and I was happy to gorge on their adventures vicariously without ever feeling denigrated.

I write this blog because I enjoy it. It’s a handy way of exploring ideas and the world around us and writing things down helps me to get my thoughts in some kind of order. The fact that some people seem to enjoy reading it is a real bonus and that is really all there is to it. I’m not trying to tell anybody else how they should live their lives, just exploring my own choices.

Which brings me to the navel gazing. I’m trying really hard to set aside the novelty aspect of life on the boat and work out why I am enjoying the experience so much. There are obvious factors like the scenery, peace and quiet, abundant wildlife and friendly neighbours (and the stove, don’t forget the stove) but all of that could easily be attained living in a very comfortable house in the countryside.

Don’t forget the stove

The boat, on the other hand, presents plenty of reasons for not living on the water. There is a never-ending round of chores and repairs, we are always tripping over each other and there is never having enough space to store anything. We have cut our personal belongings down to a ridiculous level but there are still more ‘things’ than there are spaces to keep them in. We have limited wi-fi availability, the phone signal is dodgy and we don’t have constant running hot water a lot of the time. Last night the mains electricity was playing on off, on off all evening. Life on a boat is harder than life on land so why is it so much fun?

By modern standards our life now is quite primitive and at times less comfortable than the one we are leaving behind but at the same time I can’t help but feel it is more satisfying. It’s certainly more demanding. To some extent it’s like going back in time. My dad was a joiner and spent his working days being creative in a physically demanding job. In his limited amount of free time he was normally found repairing or restoring something or tending his modest vegetable patch in the back garden. Leisure time was a novel concept then and life was full without having to be filled. Perhaps the boat takes us back some way to that time when there was always something that needed doing as opposed to finding something to do.

Humankind has done a magnificent job of making life easier through technology. From electric tooth brushes to pneumatic nail guns we have managed to take the labour out of nearly everything we do. There is no need to walk anywhere if we don’t want to, lifts and escalators have taken the place of staircases; and digging, weeding, hoeing and harvesting are all taken care of by Tescos. Now we have so much more free time and we can go to the gym or for a run to get the exercise that used to be an integral part of everyday life. I genuinely don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad one but it does seem a bit odd when you think about it.

Our new lifestyle on our Golden Girl is definitely more taxing than our old one but at the same time it is strangely more satisfying. The simple processes of staying warm, dry and well fed require a little more effort than they used to and that in turn brings a greater sense of achievement. The boat is definitely more complex than the house was. There is more to learn, more to go wrong but also more reward from making it work. It demands more time and investment both mentally and physically and for me, at least, it’s just more interesting.

I’m going to put a note in my diary and read this again in a few months time and we’ll see if I still agree with myself or whether it turns out it’s a fool’s paradise I am living in and not a marina at all. In the mean time life on board provides me with plenty to do when I’m not contemplating mental conundrums on a dreich or soft day.

Right, enough of all this philosophical navel gazing stuff, I’m off to empty the toilet.

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Sitting on our warm and cosy boat and staring into the fire as the ice in the marina gradually melts made me realise just how important our stove is. So important I thought I would write about it.

I have fond, if somewhat rose-tinted memories of growing up in a council house with basic central heating. I don’t mean central heating in the modern sense of the term, what I mean is that we had a coal fire and it was roughly in the centre of the house. It may have been central but it’s role of heating the whole house was plainly unachievable and our levels of comfort were indirectly proportional to how far away from the fire we were. In the depths of winter I recall changing into my pyjamas in front of the fire before attempting to get up the stairs, into my bedroom and under the bed clothes in less than five seconds, and then attempting to warm the bed up with what was left of my meagre body heat. A hot water bottle may have been deployed in extreme conditions I admit. Eight warm, snugly and peaceful hours later I would awake to find ice had formed on the inside of the bedroom windows while I had been dreaming of long hot summer holidays. Now, approaching retirement and in an era of sophisticated, thermostatically controlled, touch of a button activated heating systems I find myself once more scraping ice off the windows from the inside. It sounds grim I know but I’m actually loving it and I think I know why. I think it’s all about the fire.

Baby it’s cold outside (photo by Gill Pearson)

The option to heat your entire living space to any temperature you choose, to control which rooms are heated and when, and to be able to adjust and monitor the system from your phone seems like the ultimate convenient heating solution. The alternative of filling coal buckets, emptying ash pans and attempting to ‘move’ heat from a single source around fifty seven feet of ice clad steel tubing couldn’t possibly be seen as preferable or even acceptable could it? So why am I enjoying it? Well it’s all about the fire.

Maybe it’s the whole effort, reward cycle. After all setting the timer and thermostat on a modern central heating system doesn’t require much effort and even if you overcome the challenge of a wireless system it’s still only a momentary sense of satisfaction. It doesn’t last. You stay warm but there isn’t any sense of earning that warmth. Tending our solid fuel stove on the other hand is a never ending task that requires real physical effort and a degree of skill and organisation. Carrying a full coal scuttle the length of the boat whilst it rocks from side to side is a brilliant core workout and those 20kg bags of fuel don’t move themselves either. When it comes to keeping the fire in it will burn for ten hours without attention but during the day a little more tending gives us more control. Feeding the fire with coal, emptying the ash pan, cleaning up the dust and adjusting the ventilation to fine tune the heat output means that there is a real sense of effort and involvement in order to achieve the reward of warmth. Then there is the cooking! There is always a kettle on the go and more often than not there will be a stew or curry simmering away, filling the boat with mouth watering smells. The stove has become a crucial element of day to day life that provides warmth, hot food and a good deal of satisfaction.

The true meaning of mult-fuel

Apart from the sense of reward there may be another reason why I am just a little bit obsessed by this simple metal box. Fire has been at the heart of living for a couple of million years now so in the scheme of things our modern ways of controlling it in the form of cookers, boilers and other heating methods are new inventions and maybe in evolutionary terms we haven’t yet left the hearth behind. Nearly everybody enjoys a bonfire or a campfire and who doesn’t love a good barbecue. The idea of sitting around a fire is so ingrained in our species that it drives us to create excuses for doing it and cooking on a fire takes us back even deeper into our roots. Huddling around an open fire and baking potatoes in it couldn’t be described as practical but its attraction endures beyond far more convenient methods of preparing food or staying warm.

We’ve put several pictures on social media of our stove blazing away with pots and pans on it and I have been amazed by the level of attention these posts have attracted. It seems that food and fire are just as critically connected and central to our existence as they ever were. Despite the unbelievable technological advances that we have achieved in the past few hundred years we are still essentially driven by primitive needs and emotions and maybe that is why I am looking forward to finishing this post and putting a bit more coal on the fire. Maybe the novelty will wear off eventually but for now, it’s all about the fire.

Like this:

We are back on dry land and I am wondering how do you get a quart into a pint pot?

Plenty of space in this one!

We are once more in our cosy little park home in Warton and as I contemplate moving everything from here to our new home at the marina I am reminded of my first job working for Field and Trek, the outdoor equipment suppliers. Allow me to explain:

When I originally went to work for them they operated from two high street shops but carried a bewildering quantity and range of stock squeezed into a rabbit warren of basements, attics and rickety extension buildings. Every new delivery brought fresh frustrations as we were expected to pack items into already full shelving bays. I complained bitterly one day to the manager about the impossible task of putting twenty large tents into a space that was barely big enough for five. “Can you get just one more in?” he asked. “Well yes, I suppose so” I replied. “Well just keep doing that until they are all put away” he quipped. I have a feeling his words will be coming back to haunt me over the next few weeks and months.

About a quarter of our possessions are now on the boat and those that remain here will have to be severely whittled down before the final move. It’s going to take a good deal of ingenuity in terms of storage space on that boat to fit everything on board. Even then it can’t possibly work without another round of charity shop trips, Ebay sales and calling in favours from friends with large attics and garages. (Hint, hint) It’s going to be another hard lesson in working out just how little we need to be comfortable and content. There are plenty of existing ‘live-a-boards’ at the marina to prove that it can be done but when I look around at our furniture, books, CD’s, clothes etc., I am just a little bit daunted by the task and as for the shed, well I’m just pretending it’s empty for now!

Look out for the advert on Right Move soon:

BEAUTIFUL, COSY, MODERNISED SINGLE BEDROOM PARK HOME FOR SALE

Contents also available by negotiation.

I found myself sitting on the boat the other day looking into the galley and thinking, I wonder what’s behind that kick board under the kitchen unit? Before I knew it I was lying on the floor rejoicing at the size of the cavity I had discovered when the board was removed. I suspect there might be quite a bit of that kind of thing going on over the coming months.

Meanwhile, it’s back to painting, weeding and generally sprucing up this place with a view to a quick sale. Offers invited!